A British court has handed a former army chef a nearly four-year jail term for possessing weapons for “terrorist purposes”. Mark Broadhurst, 28, was given the sentence on Wednesday at Sheffield Crown Court in England, two years after police uncovered online messages in which he expressed racist views and an intention to sell homemade firearms to right-wing groups. Police found a stockpile of weapons at Broadhurst’s home address when they took him into custody in September 2024, including knives and crossbows, black powder, ammunition, air pistols and what officials described as “an improvised homemade cannon”.
The former British Army member was also found to be part of an online chat group with three other men who last year were jailed for planning to carry out a “terrorist” attack at mosques or synagogues as part of what they believed to be a coming “race war”. Frank Ferguson, head of the special crime division of the UK’s public prosecution agency, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), said Broadhurst was “clearly interested in violence and developing weapons that had the ability to cause untold harm to innocent people”. Detective Chief Superintendent James Dunkerley, who heads “counterterror” policing in the northeastern region, said Broadhurst was found to be harbouring an “extreme right-wing mindset” and was “proactively ordering components to make explosives”.
Broadhurst pleaded guilty to firearm possession and possessing an explosive under suspicious circumstances, but denied they were for “terrorism” purposes. A judge, however, ruled that Broadhurst’s offences were connected to “terrorism”. His conviction comes against a backdrop of rising racial tensions and hate crimes in the UK, with marginalised communities increasingly targeted. British police in July arrested 12 people in connection with an “extreme right-wing terrorism threat” targeting an Islamic gathering in eastern England.
Six months earlier, UK prosecutors said they were handling the highest number of hate crime cases referred by police in its history.
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